Greetings in the name of our Intercessor and Lord Christ Jesus. The last week has been crazy since I have only been home one or two nights for the whole week. I am going to post my sermon from last week on this post and then I will give a little catch up on what I have been doing plus last night's sermon on the next post. So here is my Lent 5 sermon on Psalm 102:
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for tonight is from Psalm 102 looking specifically at verses 1, 2, 16 and 17. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you! 2 Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call! For the Lord builds up Zion; he appears in his glory; 17 he regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.”
When I was a kid I had a reoccurring nightmare. I think I only had it two or three times, but it scared me every time. See as a child I was extremely scared of dogs, stupid I know but it was part of my childhood. So my dream was that I was walking down the street we lived on and when I would get to the alley which was about half a block away from our house, a pack of several big, scary dogs would come running at me from down the alley. I would run as fast as I possibly could around our house, into the backyard headed straight for the basement door. As I ran through our yard around the house there were several people from the community, our church, or school, adults from around town that I knew rather well. And as I ran past all of these people I would open my mouth and try to scream as loud as I could for help from them. However, as I tied to scream, nothing came out. I could feel my throat trying so hard to scream but no scream ever came. And it was so frustrating having people right there to help but because I couldn’t get any screams to actually come out, they didn’t notice me or the dogs. This is when I would wake up in a panic though because in my dream I was scared out of my mind that these dogs were going to kill me, and the people who could help me couldn’t hear my cries for help.
Luckily, it was just a dream and mom would be able to calm me down and get me back to sleep. However, what if it wasn’t a dream? I don’t mean the pack of ravage dogs chasing me, I mean being in a situation where you are utterly distraught and cry out for help with all your might, begging and pleading for help, but it seems like no one is listening. Would that not be a nightmare? Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever actually experienced a time in your life where you feel like absolutely no one is hearing your cry for help?
In our Psalm for this evening, this is exactly what the psalmist is experiencing. He starts his psalm by saying, “Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you! 2 Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call!” Notice though who he is crying out to, who is the one not hearing his cries? He is not just calling out to those around him, people he knows who he thinks can help him. No, he cries out to God, the Lord! He calls on the highest power he knows, the creator of heaven and earth, the all-power, almighty LORD! And yet this is the one who he feels is not hearing his cries, he feels that the Lord has hidden his face, looked away from him, not allowing the cries and pleas of distress come to His ears. Have you ever felt THIS way? Have you ever experienced a time in your life where you took your troubles to God, crying out to the one and only Lord of all, and it seems like He is not hearing your cry for help?
See it normally takes a lot for us to finally turn to the Lord. We let our problems get to the extreme worst before we turn our cries to God. Just like when we looked at Psalm 32 a couple weeks ago where we wait until our sin is eating away us before we finally turn to Him in confession releasing our sins to Him, with problems and difficult situations we do the same thing, letting them build up and lead us farther into the muck and mud before we finally realize we are stuck and have no way out.
Then we finally decide that we have no other options, nobody else to call on, no one else who could be of any help besides God. Our problem is finally big enough for Him to worry about, so we turn to Him in prayer. Most of the time, we literally hit our knees, fold our hands, and close our eyes. Even though our normal bed time prayers are usually said laying in bed, half falling asleep, this utter desperation of the mess or situation calls for a special prayer. We get on our knees, fold our hands, close our eyes and pray like we were taught as children. Now we let everything out. We confess that we have gotten ourselves into this mess, we acknowledge that we should have turned to Him much sooner than we did, we explain exactly what the situation is, why it is so bad and why we feel so trapped or stuck, our raw emotions are freed and we hold nothing back, giving the entire scenario to Him, placing all trust in His hands, begging for direction, for the wisdom to know what to do, guidance to get us out of this mess in the best way possible. We go to sleep feeling a little better thinking that now God is going to take care of us and fix everything. Only to wake up the next morning and be just as lost and confused as before, just as stuck and helpless as we were. Did God not hear my prayer? Is He hiding His face from me, not inclining His ear to my pleas? I finally turn to Him for help, and now He doesn’t hear my cry? This is as frustrating as my dream where the people are right there in front of me, but with all my might and effort I can’t get them to hear me. God is supposed to always be there, always listening to my prayer, why now at the time I need Him most am I not able to get Him to hear me? What do I do now to get out of this mess? Who can help me if God doesn’t even hear me? Have you ever felt this way like our psalmist?
However, unlike the dream where I could actually see that the people could not hear me, in real life when it comes to God, we just assume He doesn’t hear us because it seems like He isn’t answering or responding. But why do we assume He doesn’t hear us? Look at what our psalmist, the very one who feels this way says in verses 16 and 17, “For the Lord builds up Zion; he appears in his glory; 17 he regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.” He knows God hears his prayers. The same way when Jesus prays at the tomb of Lazarus He starts His prayer by saying, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me, I knew that you always hear me.” Christ Himself knows the Father is always listening. God does always hear our prayers. He not only hears them but does not despise them either. God loves it when we turn to Him in Prayer. In Psalm 50 we hear the Lord tell us, “Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you.” He not only hears our prayers but He answers us too. So if God always hears our prayers, and He promises to deliver us, then why does it seem like He is not answering us, nothing changes and we are still stuck in the middle of the same mess or suffering?
God does always hear our prayers. He does always answer our prayers. He does deliver us when we call upon Him in the day of trouble. However, when He promises to deliver us, He doesn’t promise to make everything immediately perfect, He doesn’t promise to completely remove the mess or situation from our lives. Just like He doesn’t answer the Israelites cry to be saved from the poisonous snakes in the wilderness in Numbers by removing the snakes. No, instead He leaves the snakes, lets the people endure the bites and pain, but He does deliver them. Call upon me in the day and trouble and I will deliver you says the Lord. What He is saying is I will deliver you from being overtaken or over powered by the suffering and pain, I will deliver you from being driven to utter despair and being sent to your own doom or harm. I will deliver you from ever escaping my control and protection. He doesn’t promise to make the messes go away or give us the exact answer to solve the problem. Sometimes he leaves the poisonous snakes in our lives causing us pain and suffering, confusion and helplessness. Nevertheless, He did still deliver the Israelites by giving them the lifted up bronze serpent to look at and be saved. In the same way He delivers us by giving us the Son of Man lifted up to look to and be saved. We may still have to endure the pain of this life, but we know when we look up to the Son of Man who was lifted up, we are saved and God has delivered us. Even Christ Himself asked God to take from Him the cup in the garden of Gethsemane. He asked His heavenly Father to deliver Him from the suffering and painful situation He knew He was about to endure. However, He includes, not as I will, but as you will. Jesus knows the most important thing is for the will of the Father to be done, because He knows best. Christ did not want to have to go through the pain and suffering, but He trusted that if that was the Father’s will, it was what was best. And the Father’s will is not to remove the cup from Jesus. The will of the Father is to let His Son die in order to save all of mankind. He lets His own Son, Jesus Christ, go through the pain and suffering of the crucifixion on the cross to forgive you of all your sins, to give you your salvation, and be the Savior who does indeed deliver you. Our Father does what He knows is best and lets His Son die to save you. He lets His Son be lifted up on the cross so that you have your deliverance from the poisonous snakes in your life. He delivers you by giving you the forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life. That may not include always removing the messes and suffering from your life, but it does include Romans 8, that no suffering, no messes, no poisonous snakes, no enemies, not even death can separate us from the love of God. This is His will that we ask be done. That no matter what we endure in this life time, His will be done not ours. And then when we find ourselves in those messes, in the suffering an pain, we know He hears our every prayer, we know He will deliver us, because we have His Son lifted up to look at and know we are saved and nothing, no amount of messes or pain or suffering can take that away from us. Our God does indeed hear our prayers, He does always answer us, maybe not in the way we wanted Him too, but we trust that His will is done, that He is in control and knows what is best. We know His will is to deliver us and keep us in His love, and we have the Son of Man lifted up to always look to for that deliverance. Our God who did not spare His own Son, but let Him die for us, will always deliver us from anything this life can throw at us.
In the name of the Son of Man who was lifted up for us, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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